


You Deserve

by rboudreau



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 10x09 rewrite, 10x09 spoilers, Conversations, Emotional Baggage, Fix-It, Heart-to-Heart, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22141573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rboudreau/pseuds/rboudreau
Summary: A 10x09 sort-of fix it fic. Because God forbid we have them talk it out on camera ever.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 13
Kudos: 198





	You Deserve

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! It's been almost five years since I've written for Gallavich, but I couldn't NOT after this episode. I just felt like so much more could've been done, and I had the overwhelming urge to get this out. I hope you guys like it. <3

Ian hobbled his way to the door, taking a deep breath before ringing the buzzer.

It had taken him the better part of an hour trying to convince Sandy to tell him where Mickey had moved to. She, like everyone in Ian’s entire family, thought he was an idiot for walking away from Mickey after proposing. He’d had to do a lot of convincing to get her to give him the address.

Stepping back from the door to look up at the window he assumed belonged to the apartment, he regretted asking her. He’d had a plan all day of how this was going to go, but now his conversation with Lip kept replaying in his head.

_“I think you should marry him. Someday. All right? But first, just try and figure out why you don’t want to.”_

He still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it all yet, but now the door was opening, and Byron was hugging him and asking him to take Mickey back, and it was all fucking with his head.

A part of him thought maybe he was still in the hospital after breaking his leg, having some weird drug induced dream — one where Mickey called him ‘bro’ and was dating a twink and acted like a top from some poorly written porn video. Everything would make more sense if that were the case. The first and only time Ian had ever suggested they switched roles, Mickey had threatened to cut Ian’s dick off and fuck himself with it if Ian didn’t want to do it anymore. Some heavy narcotics giving him nightmares would be so much easier to deal with.

But then Byron went back upstairs, and he could see all the forced indifference in Mickey’s eyes, and he knew this was real. Ian had fucked up, and Mickey was putting up such big walls, he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump recruited him to the border.

Ian stared at Mickey for a minute, watched Mickey try to avoid eye contact, and fidgeted with his crutches.

“Can we...is there somewhere we can sit? I wanna talk,” Ian said softly.

There’s a small bench a few feet away outside some bullshit organic shop, and Mickey huffed and led Ian over, helping him lay the crutches down on the ground below them.

It’s silent for a moment, Ian staring down at his hands and trying to figure out how to start. Eventually, the only thing that comes out is “I...I bought you an—an engagement ring today.”

Mickey’s head snapped up, a mixture of hope and sadness and nerves on his face. “What?”

Ian exhaled slowly, digging his hand into his pocket and pulling out the ring. White gold, simple, yet eternally complex in meaning in Ian’s mind. “I took Liam with me to pick out a ring. Or, two rings. Mine’s—” he trailed off, tugging the second ring out from beneath his shirt, dangling on an old chain around his neck. He squeezed the warm band gently and chanced a glance up at Mickey. 

Mickey hesitantly took his ring from Ian, the small weight feeling much more massive than what it actually was. It felt as heavy as the ton of bricks that had been sitting in his stomach all week. “Ian…”

He wanted to reach out to Mickey, but kept his hands to himself. He knew how much he wanted to say but wasn’t sure exactly how to say it. “I spent the whole day convincing myself to just...go buy you a ring and propose to you again and sucking it up so I don’t lose you.”

He watched as Mickey’s face fell, that too familiar sad, broken look back in his eyes. “I don’t fucking want you to have to _convince_ yourself to get married to me.”

“I know,” Ian whispered.

“I got the message last time, man. You don’t love me enough to get married right now. And that’s fine. It’s cool. But don’t fucking show up with a ring and some bullshit speech and expect me to just—”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” he interrupted gently. “Can you just...will you please just let me talk and say what I have to say?”

Mickey leaned back against the window to the store, crossing his arms over his chest, ring still clenched in one hand. “Whatever, man.”

He shifted as much as his broken leg allowed, turning to face Mickey just a bit more. “First of all, loving you enough...isn’t the problem here. At _all_. I don’t think I’ll ever have the words to tell you how much I love you, Mick. You’re the _only_ person I could ever see myself married to.”

Mickey scoffed petulantly. “And yet…”

“And yet, I’ve got decades worth of parental baggage and several years worth of mental health issues that are kind of fucking up my decision to spend the rest of my life with the guy I’ve been in love with since I was a teenager.” He rested a hand lightly on Mickey’s elbow. “Mickey. I’ve loved you for so many years now. I know I’ve fucked up a lot. But it’s always been you. No matter who else I’ve dated or where we’ve been, it always comes back to you.”

“So just...marry me, you fucking idiot,” Mickey said weakly.

Ian’s eyes stung with unshed tears. “That’s not fair to you. Jesus, you know how much Frank and Monica screwed me up—”

“ _Fuck_ Frank and Monica, Ian! They were junkies who got off on destroying each other and everyone around them. We’re not Frank and Monica.”

“You don’t think I’m gonna turn out just like Monica?! I’m bipolar, Mickey. I don’t know who I am from one day to the next. I can’t guarantee shit. So why do you _want_ to spend the rest of your life with me? How can you possibly know that me, that this, all of me, all the versions I am, how do you know that’s what you want to spend the rest of your life with?” His eyes and his throat burned, tears nearly suffocating him as he choked out his words. He watched Mickey’s eyes flick to sympathetic and wanted to crawl underneath a blanket and hide for days.

Mickey uncrossed his arms, turning and sliding a hand to Ian’s jaw, making him make eye contact. “Jesus Christ, Ian,” he murmured, leaning forward to press a short but firm kiss against Ian’s lips. “Now listen to me, asshole. You think I don’t know what I’m getting myself into? I’ve _been_ in it. I watched you leave to enlist in the army and come back after stealing a helicopter, and you were drugged out dancing in a club every night. I watched you stay in bed for days barely moving because you were so depressed. I watched you run away with my kid while you were manic. And _then_ you became gay Jesus and blew up a fucking van. I’ve seen just about everything you can throw at me. And I’m still fucking here. So don’t you dare ask me how the fuck I know if I want to be with all these versions of you, when I’ve been loving them for years.”

Ian felt a few tears forcing their way out of his eyes and sniffled, just barely holding back a sob as Mickey led Ian’s face into his neck. “I’ve broken up with you, I’ve cheated on you, I’ve hit you, I’ve abandoned you so many times, how can you still want to marry me?”

“Because I fucking love you, Ian. You’ve put me through hell and I’ve put you through hell right back. It’s like you said. It always comes back to you.” He ran a hand through Ian’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp. “I wish you’d stop letting your asshole parents and your unmedicated decisions have an affect on your life.” 

Ian rubbed his face into Mickey’s shirt, removing the fallen tears from his skin. “I don’t know how.” They sat there in silence for a few minutes, and Ian watched as Mickey toyed with the ring in his other hand, letting it roll around his palm slowly. 

“I want you back, Mickey. I don’t want to lose you.” He paused, the air feeling heavy around them. “And I spent all day convinced the only way to do that was to propose to you again. And then I talked to Lip before I left, and...he told me that he thinks I should marry you. But just...not right now. He thinks I should figure out what the fuck is going on in my head that’s making me react so badly to all this. And it kind of hit me hard, I think. So...I think I’m gonna try going back to therapy. Talk to someone about all this.”

Mickey tensed a little, his hand stopping it’s movement on Ian’s head briefly before continuing. “You hated therapy.”

He shrugged helplessly, reaching over to pick up Mickey’s ring out of his hand. “I love you,” he said eventually. “And I’d do anything I thought would let me be with you forever. I _want_ to spend the rest of my life with you. I know you want to get married. And I want to make you happy. If telling some shrink about every fucked up thing that’s happened to me will help my brain shut up long enough to walk down the aisle, I’ll do it.”

Mickey’s lips twitched downward. “Listen, I...yeah, I want to marry you. I don’t know when the fuck I went from not wanting to even hold your hand to wanting a ring and a new last name and all that hetero bullshit. But I do. But I would’ve been _fine_ if you had never brought up marriage in the first place. I would’ve been fine just being your boyfriend and working with our POs until we got off probation and just lived our lives. You just...you got my hopes up and then you let me down again.”

Ian sniffed, a new batch of tears burning at his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to marry you if you’re not in it 100%. You think I want you to regret marrying me? You think I want you to resent deciding to get married and end up hating me? I don’t want to be like either of our parents, Ian. I want you to marry me because it doesn’t make sense _not_ to. I want you to marry me because you love me so fucking much, you want to tie yourself to me in every way possible.”

Ian wiped his face. “I-I-I wouldn’t hate you, Mick. That’s not...this isn’t a you thing. I don’t even know how much of it is a me thing. I don’t know if this is all some mental and emotional trauma from growing up with shitty, dysfunctional parents that fucked up my idea of marriage, or if this is part of my bipolar disorder convincing me I’m not worth marrying because one wrong episode can send me back to drugs or cheating or maybe killing myself. I don’t know if I always would have ended up being scared of marriage, even without being bipolar or having Frank and Monica ruin it for me. I don’t know. All I know is that I want to figure that all out. I will dig as deep as I can with whatever shrink I have to in order to figure my shit out. I...I want to be the husband you deserve.”

Mickey’s throat felt clogged with emotion. He took the ring back out of Ian’s hand, letting it slide onto his ring finger. _Where it belonged,_ he thought to himself. The last ring he’d worn on this finger had felt like a vice, like suffocation and fear and hatred. This ring felt like freedom; like love and protection and family. And he almost hated it more than the last, because he couldn’t have all of that yet. Maybe not ever, if Ian didn’t get the answers he wanted out of therapy.

“And what if therapy’s a bust?” he croaked. “What if, at the end of the day, you still don’t want to marry me? What do we do then?”

Ian sighed sadly. “Then...then I’d hope that _you_ love _me_ enough to talk about it and figure out where we stand. But...until then...I’m just asking you to give me some time to figure things out.”

Mickey scrubbed his hand down his face. “You’re really gonna try?”

“I promise. I know that may not mean much right now, and I-I get it if you want to stay here until then. But I swear I’ll try. I’ll call my old therapist first thing in the morning and set up an appointment. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove to you that I want to make this work.”

Mickey leaned his head against Ian’s, breathing him in for a moment. “Can I keep this?” he asked, gesturing towards the ring still on his hand. 

Ian reached over, lacing their fingers together and resting their hands in Mickey’s lap. He nodded, feeling a brief flicker of hope in his chest for the first time since they were in the court house. “I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I appreciate any and all comments/kudos/critique you are willing to give me. Thanks for taking the time to read this!
> 
> If you want to chat, you can find me on tumblr at [ be-your-own-anchor5](http://www.be-your-own-anchor5.tumblr.com) or on twitter at [ whydyouhave2BOO](http://www.twitter.com/whydyouhave2BOO)


End file.
